


CONSEQUENCES

by Greenleaf66



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 01:08:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9795521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenleaf66/pseuds/Greenleaf66
Summary: When a certain Devil returns from his three-month absence with a surprise.  Warning:  bad language!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this little dribble when I was quite angry (having read some future spoilers) and it all just spilled out the day after Episode 13. But, well, here it is. There are some of us who can relate and some who can't, but here goes....Again, not beta'd, so forgive the mistakes. Comments and rants always welcome!

Chapter 1: The Return

The knock on the door had her heart fairly jumping with happiness. Chloe found she was actually shaking, so glad he was back she thought her heart would beat right out of her chest. Of course, she would have to make him pay for the weeks of distress he had caused. She had never worried so much over anything in her entire life, and she felt a little stab as she remembered how her heart had shattered when the elevator doors at his penthouse had opened to reveal the furniture covered in sheets and nearly all personal traces of him gone.

Maze too was overjoyed. It was finally over, she was finally going to be able to ask him what happened when he went to Hell to get the formula and got stuck there. She never wanted to feel fear or upset like that again. She was going to beat him up after they fussed over him for awhile, after she found out where he’d been, a black hole to her tracking skills that was something she’d never experienced before. It had been disturbing in more ways than one.

But it was over. He’d found out whatever he needed to find out, he was back, Chloe would be her normal weird self and not zombie-stiff with grief and heartache and they could all finally have some fun again. 

And her roommate and the Devil she loved would finally do the nasty and maybe, just maybe, things would be all right. I’m so glad I told her…….

Yes, Maze had told her, finally. Had showed her true form, had sat Chloe down and explained (well, as much as she could) about just who, rather what, Lucifer actually was. And about God’s Little Miracle that had sent Lucifer tumbling over the edge of his paranoia and landing squarely in mental hell.

She had tried to stop that bitch of a mother (goddess, my ass, thought Maze, frickin’ wicked witch-bitch!) from crushing Lucifer’s happiness, had tried physically pulling him out of the bar before Charlotte could spew her poison. And she would have succeeded too, if Lucifer’s sharp eyes had not caught that picture of Amenadiel with Chloe’s mother. The look on his face as his dream had shattered still gave Maze a nasty feeling in her chest that she figured must have been indigestion or heartburn. All this crap could have been avoided if Charlotte had just kept her fat mouth shut.

Maze got to the door first, and Lucifer strode in, as if he’d been gone for a day, instead of nearly three months.

“Detective,” he beamed a bright smile at Chloe, “you look lovely as always. And Maze, you too---“

Chloe’s eyes had gone wide as soon as he stepped in the door. Her legs were shaking and she was still hanging on to the kitchen counter, willing her knees to stop knocking so loudly. Willing herself to jump across the room and --

Lucifer opened his arms wide, as if to greet them, then turned back to the door. A tall, dyed blonde had suddenly appeared, in a too-bright ill-fitting suit that looked very off-the-rack. He held out his hand to her and she stepped into the apartment, very aware of the two women who had frozen in their tracks.

“This is my wife,” Lucifer announced, “meet Candy Morningstar—“

“Your WHAT??” They both screamed as Lucifer hastily launched into “Well, we met in Vegas and one thing led to another and--”

Chloe, for one indeterminate second that could have been a year, stood stock still. After the immediate stabbing pain, came the furious rush of adrenalin, so wild, so strong that her legs were working just fine again.

She stormed over to him, rage like she had never known in her life boiling her insides like a blast furnace. White hot rage, as if fire could literally shoot from her eyes. She marched up to Lucifer, and was immensely satisfied to note that at least Candy had the good sense to back up but the Devil did not. 

Before Lucifer could continue with whatever drivel was pouring from his lips, Chloe plowed a powerful hard right hook to his face and knocked him backwards. (Oh, I am so glad for those kick-boxing classes at the academy!) 

Lucifer was on his ass on the floor, wiping blood away from his lip where Chloe had split it with her ring. “Det-“

“FUCK YOU!” she screamed at him. “You rotten bastard, you – you MISCREANT! Take that THING, that -- SKANK and get the fuck out of my house, before I KILL YOU! And don’t you DARE say another fucking WORD or I WILL kill you!”

Maze, bless her, took that as her cue to spring into action, and pushed a horrified bawling Candy Morningstar out the door, grabbed Lucifer by his jacket collar, hauled him to his feet, and flung him after her.

He barely kept his balance as Maze followed him out. 

“Well, thankfully you have some sense, what the hell is wrong with—“ came out as he turned to her, but before he could finish the sentence Maze’s fist smashed him in the eye.

“That’s for good measure, you prick! You really are a bastard, Morningstar,” she spat at him. “Why don’t you go fuck yourself? Even you’ve never sunk as low as that before…” she gave the new Mrs. Morningstar a look that would have withered crops, before turning back to the apartment and slamming the door behind her, leaving a sputtering Lucifer wondering what the hell had just happened.

Maze looked at Chloe, feeling that weird indigestion again at the horrified expression on her roommate’s face.

“Well,” she said with a feral grin “at least we know he still bleeds when you’re around. Too bad, that cut on his lip will heal about a half mile from here, but he’ll have that black eye for a couple of weeks. Gotta admit, Decker, it felt really, really good punching him in the face--”

But Chloe wasn’t listening. She was standing in the spot where she’d hit him, the sudden rage burned out of her just as quickly as it had consumed her. Maze noticed the colour draining out of her face, before Chloe raised a panicked hand to her mouth and ran for the bathroom, barely making it before the retching began and she lost the lunch they’d had an hour before (and quite possibly that morning’s breakfast and last night’s supper as well).

After a few minutes the sound of running water and flushing replaced the more violent sounds of upchucking, and Maze decided it was safe to approach, not quite sure what to do but feeling as if she had to do something.

She found Chloe sitting on the floor between the toilet and the sink, her face dripping with water and a towel clutched in her hands. The sound that came out of her was barely human, the raw sobs shaking her entire body.

“Ah shit, Decker,” Maze clucked, before doing something she had never done in all her time on earth or in Hell, for that matter – she knelt down beside the sobbing woman and put her arms around her, cradling Chloe against her. Even if her own life depended on it, she would not have known what to say, so instead she stroked the detective’s hair with a tenderness that surprised even her. The only thing she could think of was how often she was going to punch Lucifer for this.

“And Amenadiel,” she growled to herself, “curse that flying rat for telling his mother about Chloe and ruining everything.”

[To Be Continued]


	2. Consquences II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Devil discovers that every action has consequences, sometimes unintended ones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here's the rest of this one. Hope you like it. Comments are very welcome.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters, they just sort of occupy an apartment in my mind!

Chapter 2: Friends

Lucifer waited until the bruises around his eye had nearly vanished, which took over a week (Maze punched a lot harder than the detective and, being an immortal, she could actually hurt him pretty badly if she wanted to).

He and Candy had moved into the penthouse, and he’d put up with her annoying ooh’s and aah’s over the elegance of his home and his wonderful taste (though if truth be told, she could barely appreciate anything that didn’t sparkle with the false dazzle of Las Vegas and its mostly tacky décor)…….

He only half-listened to her incessant prattling, finding it easier to simply tune her out completely than let her annoy him too much. She had the intellectual capacity of a rather small soap dish, but she was easy to please and not too demanding of his time, apart from her repeated attempts to convince him to re-open Lux so they could get down to some serious partying. 

But Lucifer was having none of it. The club simply did not interest him in the slightest any more.

He had decided to avoid trying to contact Maze or Chloe for the time being. Maze had punched him! Had actually dared to punch him. Her audacity still astonished, it was an outrage and one he would not have dreamed possible.

In all fairness, she was no longer bound to him by oath and, though it had never stopped her from rushing to his aid when required, it also meant that she could do whatever she pleased and he had no right to call her on it. He had released her and she was her own demon now.

He did not try and see his brother or Charlotte, he was still so very angry with them, and he was not sure that he would ever be able to stomach the sight of either of them again. It was best this way. To stay away from his family and avoid any nascent plots they might be hatching between the two of them and who knows how many others of the heavenly horde they would involve.

Yet Lucifer was bored out of his mind. He missed the police work, the fun of tracking ‘bad guys’ and handing them over for their just punishment. (But he knew in his heart that it was Chloe that he missed, their constant banter and teasing, the knowing looks they would exchange and just the real enjoyment of working with her, the way they bounced ideas off one another….and of course the fun of goading her into a classic eye roll, sometimes even smacking him or telling him to shut up…) He shook his head to clear the thought. He knew it wouldn’t be happening again any time soon, so best not to dwell.

That morning Candy’s prattling had him gritting his teeth in irritation, so he decided it was time to swallow his embarrassment (the Devil does NOT get embarrassed) and drop into the station. 

He wondered if she would punch him again, and actually smiled at the thought, but pushed it aside as he grabbed his jacket and headed for the underground parking lot.

It was mid-morning when he got there and simply barged his way in, completely ignoring the desk sergeant, who looked at him as if he’d actually grown horns and a tail.

The first person he recognized when he got to the homicide division was Ella Lopez. She was hurrying somewhere, an evidence bag clutched in one hand, as he came down the stairs heading to the bull pen.

She had seen him and he found himself gulping at the look on her face. Normally the little troll would have laughed at least and made some inane quip, but this morning she actually looked surprised, her mouth open in honest puzzlement.

“Dude, I’m like totally surprised you have the nerve to show up here,” she said. He noted the chill in her voice and the icy stare from her usually twinkling dark eyes. “You’d better get gone before she spots you……..” and then her eyes went completely wide.

Before Lucifer even knew what was coming, the sucker punch got him right on the left side of his face and sent him staggering sideways with its force.

There was the douche all right, trying to shake the pain out of his right fingers from the force of his punch.

“You’ve got a helluva nerve showing up here, you rotten bastard!” Dan screamed at him. “You sonofabitch, I could kill you – I SHOULD kill you! What the fuck were you thinking? I always thought you were a low-life, but even I was starting to ACTUALLY like you before you pulled this stunt! I thought you CARED about Chloe!! How could you do this to her, you stupid fucker?--”

Lucifer didn’t say a word, moving his jaw from side to side. (Well, Daniel, you’ve been working out, I see, pushing down the uncomfortable twinge Dan’s words had elicited……)

It was obvious he was no longer welcome at the precinct (certainly not today at least) and without a further word, up the stairs he went and left the LAPD behind.

###

One more stop, he told himself, as the Corvette turned the corner on the street where Linda’s office was. She’ll help sort this at least. She had always helped, had always been willing to help, even knowing the whole truth about him. She was the first human being, not counting Father Frank, who had become a true friend and not just a convenient bed-mate…….she’d at least talk to him.

He hoped she didn’t have a patient with her, that always proved annoying. It was nearing lunch time and there was no secretary at the desk. The door to Linda’s office was ajar and he could hear her obviously chatting on the phone, and obviously not to a patient.

“Yeah, I’ll be over around 5:00, I only have one patient this afternoon, so I can wrap up early…………..oh, yes, that sounds like fun – I’ll bring some wine.” As he poked his head through the door, she had ended the call and was taking a sip from a bottled juice, her lunch laid out on the desk in front of her.

“Doctor? -- Linda? I need to talk to you…….”

She looked up from the salad she was about to start, eyes glittering behind her trademark black-rimmed glasses.

“Well, I certainly didn’t expect to ever see you again--” Her tone was not warm.

“It’s not like we had anything to DISCUSS, after we KILLED YOU and brought you back from HELL, is there?” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Well, I do believe I actually applied the paddles myself, doctor, but I would like to thank you for bringing me back--”

“You ran again, you damned coward, after LITERALLY going to Hell to save Chloe’s life – you folded up like a cheap tent and you ran off. Did it ever occur to you what effect that would have? DID IT? Not just on her, but on everybody…….

“I put my medical license on the line for you – if we couldn’t bring you and Charlotte back, do you know what would have happened to us? We’d be up for MURDER – you did something remarkable, Lucifer, and then, like a coward, you just ran away……it’s the no explanations that I can’t handle. You OWED us that…….Dan and Ella bent the law getting the ingredients for that antidote. We all did everything that you wanted…..You saved her LIFE, for fuck’s sake!

“Then you go and pull this – look, I know you’re the devil and all, but I thought, well, I thought you loved Chloe, if you didn’t then why bother to give your own life to get her that antidote? I don’t understand you, I just don’t understand….Do you know how cruel you’ve been? Not just to her, to all of us……you treat us like we’re nothing…not even worthy of a goddamned thank you--”

“You know why I had to leave, doctor, Chloe was put here by my Father to trap me. I cannot allow that, I WILL NOT allow that. None of it was real, none of it. I thought she cared for me, but she’s just following Dad’s orders………”

“Oh, Lucifer,” Linda sighed, her anger cooled slightly, but only slightly. 

“You really just don’t get IT, do you……..I thought you’d made some progress with our sessions, I really did…..

“But obviously I can’t help you” the last two words with an extra emphasis, “just a mere mortal here, so I think maybe we should all just move on--”

“Are you saying you don’t want to work with me anymore?--”

“That would be unethical,” she said in her best professional voice. “Besides, Chloe is sort of my patient now and I can actually HELP her…….Now, would you please do me the courtesy of leaving my office so that I can eat my lunch?” Without another glance his way, she stuck the fork into her salad and began to eat.

###

It was easy to decide what to do this time. He was no longer welcomed in LA by anyone that actually mattered to him. 

They had all sided with HER, he thought bitterly, of course they would. His Father had made certain of that.

Candy was delighted when he announced they were going back to Vegas. She had never fit into the LA scene and was so totally lacking in sophistication, indeed anything that made her even remotely interesting, that he may as well take her back to familiar territory, before leaving her behind as well.

They had been back in Sin City a mere two days when Lucifer departed, leaving a cheque for half a million and the keys to the Corvette on the coffee table in their suite, with a note that simply said, “Consider this our divorce settlement” clipped to the official papers to make it so….

He would go to London and stay there for awhile, somewhere he could blend in, where he would be very hard to find.

###

Chapter 3: Coming Home

As the plane banked for its landing at LAX, Lucifer found himself thinking of the years that had gone by. Twenty of them had passed since he had left LA for the second time back in 2017, and he had not been in the United States for at least sixteen of those.

He had been all over the world, stopping for weeks or months, sometimes a year in various European and Asian cities. London had been interesting for awhile. Lots of parties, lots of rich, bored women who welcomed him with open arms. Good liquor, good cigarettes, and millions of people to play with. But it wasn’t enough….It was never enough.

He traveled through India for awhile, then Australia, later Africa, went to the tropics and the temperate lands on both sides of the equator, had even stopped in Norway once to experience the Midnight Sun. He took the Trans-Siberian all the way to Kamchatka, then Japan. He actually stayed for over a year in Japan, it was peaceful and fascinating and exciting and he found a certain level of respite there……But it didn’t last, it never did.

He eventually wound up in Alaska and then traveled down the coast of British Columbia, finally arriving in Seattle. He told himself it was a whim to board the plane to LA, only a whim, but he knew he was lying to himself…….

He had seen the world in all its beauty and ugliness, but all of it had faded into the background. He still thought of her every day, sometimes for the whole day, his last glimpse of her screaming at him always his first thought. Before the other memories crowded in………

He knew she had made Lieutenant after Olivia took early retirement. He occasionally went to the LAPD official website and had read the blurb about Chloe’s promotion. Her arrest record had been outstanding, her conviction rate even better and eventually she had got her reward. 

That had been five years ago now.

What he did not know was that Maze had become his detective’s de facto partner, not officially, as he had done, but Chloe came to have the utmost confidence in Maze’s amazing tracking skills (amongst other skills the demon was a little too keen to use). When a bounty was offered, her help was semi-official, and when it was not, she worked quietly in the background. Chloe came to value the help, despite suspecting that Maze enjoyed her job just a little too much, but they made a good team when all was said and done, and had taken some truly horrible people off the streets. After her promotion, they were no longer roommates, but they had remained friends.

Lucifer noted how much the station house looked twenty years occupied. Odd, even the most modern buildings went into a decline after a time.

He sailed past the young patrolwoman at the main desk, and down the steps to Homicide. The walls were different, some solid instead of the glass he expected and then he spotted the familiar figure of Ella Lopez.

She looked mostly the same, except for one wide grey strand through her still-black hair, and maybe just a few lines around the eyes.

Eyes that nearly popped out of her head when she saw him. “Oh my God………it’s you….”

Lucifer thought she was about to faint and in an instant he was next to her. “Yes, it’s me,” he said softly, “though you keep on getting the deity wrong…I’ve……I’m here to see Chloe. Is she in Olivia’s old office?”

The look on Ella’s face brought him up short.

“We’d better have a talk,” her expression was gentle, “Come to my office.”

He followed her with a horrible sinking feeling…..something was very wrong.

###

Lucifer felt a hard lump in his throat as the cab drove to the care facility. He kept going over all that Ella had told him, willing it not to be true, but knowing that it was.

Chloe had been diagnosed with stage 4B ovarian cancer and it had metastasized quickly enough by the time it was detected that even aggressive radiation and chemo could not hope to do anything more than buy her a few extra weeks at most. She had refused both. Cancer treatments had advanced remarkably in twenty years and the cure rate for most cancers had nearly tripled. But early detection was still a major factor with the kind of rabid disease she had contracted.

She had stubbornly ignored the warning signs, the weight loss, the headaches, the insomnia. She ate analgesics and they worked, but it was the fatigue that kept getting worse and worse. One morning in the squad, she had stood up to get coffee and her legs had given out. 

When she was given the diagnosis, she had taken it, as with so many other happenings in her life, with a stoic strength. Three months. Only three months.

She had gone to work for as long as she had the strength, had made sure the homicide division was running smoothly, had offered her recommendation on a suitable replacement, and had left no little task unfinished.

She was ready now……..Only Ella really knew the extent of her illness, but they had all seen her deteriorate before their eyes and by her last day at work they all knew.

Dan had been killed in the line of duty some three years before and she wasn’t worried about Trixie any more – her wonderful little girl had grown to be a beautiful young woman, had become a very talented and sought-after painter and when she had married last year, Chloe had been so very proud of her. Trixie was 29 now and she was happy. She’d be okay.

Chloe had only one regret. And it had never stopped hurting for all the long years since Lucifer had left.

And now she was in a palliative hospice to exist quietly and alone through her last few days on earth….

Lucifer opened the door to her room. The lights were dim, only the reading lamp throwing illumination onto the figure sleeping in the bed.

She looked so frail. 

His feet refused to carry him further than the door and he stood there staring at the translucent skin, she was so still, the grayish tint to the pallor of her skin told him that death was near……

After a long moment, he was next to her. She wasn’t hooked up to any machines, but there was a double-pronged oxygen apparatus in her nose, the thin tube taped to her pale cheek, an IV bag hooked into her hand to drip the painkillers into her.

The sight of her cut his innards and all of him wanted to scream NO! to all the universe. This was unbearable. He could feel the horrible burning behind his eyes.

She looked so much older, but she was still beautiful to him, still his precious Chloe. He sat down on the bed beside her and took her free hand, the one not hooked to the IV, and gently held it in both of his.

At the touch she opened her eyes, eyes that went wide with surprise on realizing who sat with her. “Is it really you?” she managed to whisper before the tears spilled out. “y-you finally came back……”

And something inside Lucifer broke apart, the last wall of his self-denial crumbling. He didn’t try to stop the tears that ran down his face. He held her hand in his and poured his heart out to her, told her he loved her more than he ever knew was possible, that he had thought of her every day for twenty years, had missed her for every minute of every one of those days, and of how he would hate himself for all eternity for denying what he felt…..too stubborn to admit that it had been real, or true, or important……

“It was real to me, Lucifer,” she said after he had quieted. “It was always real to me…..I want you to know, I never stopped loving you….I hoped you’d come back some day….There wasn’t anyone else in all these years……”

“Are you telling me you’ve been alone all this time? No one to care for you? To love you?--”

He barely heard her answer “It doesn’t matter, no one could hold a candle to you anyway ….I had Trix, I had work….It wasn’t all bad…. Would you do something for me?” she asked.

“Would you please hold me, just for a little while?” He kicked off his shoes and stretched out next to her, then gently cradled her against him, shocked by how feather-light she was, how diminished…

“You know,” she whispered into his chest “when I get there, I’m still going to kick your Father’s ass…..” and she fell asleep against his warmth.

He lay there with her drinking in the scent of her. As she grew cold in his arms he felt himself shatter into a billion pieces, each little atom a scream of pain. He made no sound, just let the tears spill out as the loss burned through him, the most horrible pain he had ever known.

And he knew that it would never stop.

###

 

Chapter 4: The Morning After

Lucifer woke up, groggy and disoriented, and completely uncomfortable. His body was twisted in a tangle and his face rested against some sort of scratchy surface. He was not sure where he was, his last thought his arms around Chloe as she died.

He could still feel the wetness of his tears as he tried to sit up and realized he was on the floor and the scratchy surface was carpet under his face. 

There was no carpet in the hospice room……

He found it difficult to sit up, muscles cramping and squeezing and actually sore. His mind was foggy and dancing with images, years of running, years of…..something. 

When he finally looked around him, he seemed to be in a large sitting room, a leather chair a foot from him, large black glass coffee table to the other side.

He saw a bar knife sitting on the glass, next to a hard bumpy chunk of something that looked like a wood burl. He tried to focus, but the fuzziness would not clear.

What is this place? Where am I now? 

Then he recognized the hotel room. It was the Las Vegas hotel suite where he had bedded the long-gone Candy. What was he doing in this place?

And then it hit him. The fog in his mind cleared and he had a vague memory of a standing under a streetlamp smoking a cigarette, and the old man……….an old man, a Native American by the look of him, with long white hair in a braid and sparkling eyes. He was maybe 70 or 80 years old as best Lucifer could remember. He’d handed him a paper bag and said “you need this.”

“What do you mean?” Lucifer had asked, half-annoyed.

“This will help you make the decision that you need to make, it will let you SEE….”

“See what?” 

“What you need to see.” Then he had turned away with a quiet smile and walked off into the darkness.

Lucifer had been intrigued. When he got back to his suite, he reached into the bag and pulled out a very large, hard round disc with bumps all over it. Lucifer realized it was a peyote button, a very large and very old peyote button.

“How strange.” He remembered thinking.

All the drugs he had ingested since being on earth (and it had been a prodigious amount certainly, of every kind and description that anyone could imagine) he had never encountered peyote. He had heard of it of course, and read that it was reported to give amazing visions, that shamans had used it for thousands of years…….It was all but unheard of any more.

Was the old man a shaman?

He had looked in on the rather pathetic Candy, obviously too drunk to be any more fun that night, still where he’d half-dragged half-carried her to bed, and had left her snoring softly, before going to the adjoining sitting room. 

He checked the bar fridge and found a container of pineapple juice, what luck. Peyote was supposed to have an unbelievably bad flavour, he remembered, and it was always suggested to have peaches or pineapples on hand to help it down…….

He grabbed the bar knife and began cleaning some of the little bumps, then chuckled at himself. Immortal, remember? No poison would kill him. Instead, he just cut a chunk of the very tough button off and began eating……..

It truly was awful-tasting, but his curiosity had been aroused by the unexpected gift.

He remembered kicking his shoes off and sitting in the leather chair, chewing another bit of the nasty thing, waiting for the effects to begin.

The last he could clearly remember was looking down at the six-inch button in front of him and seeing a good third of it gone, before his hands suddenly became much larger and his mind started reeling.

“It’s not possible! It …….couldn’t have been a drug trip!” Drugs rarely worked on him, even the most potent, even in quantities that may have killed a dozen humans. He sometimes got a bit of a rush, or saw some colour changes……….but this had been in a class by itself.

A sudden thought occurred and he grabbed the remote. The flat screen came on with CNN loudly spouting “……..and the President’s impeachment hearing will begin on Monday morning……”

But, but that happened in May of 2017!

He was still in Las Vegas. He had just met Candy. He hadn’t married her and taken her back to Los Angeles. His mind had just used the last situation before the mescaline kicked in, used it as a starting point to show him the ultimate result of a decision……..

None of it had happened! It had seemed so real. It had taken so long, he was SURE he had lived those years, it couldn’t possibly have just been a six-hour drug trip.

Could it?

He was suddenly filled with such joy he half thought he could fly without his wings. 

It wasn’t 2037.

It wasn’t too late.

His heart soared with wild happiness, and the realization that none of it had really happened. Chloe wasn’t dead. He hadn’t spent 20 lonely years roaming the world. There was time, time enough to stop all the years of pain before they really began.

He peeked into the bedroom just to be sure, and heard Candy snoring softly under the covers.

“Sorry, luv,” he whispered at the sleeping form. “I won’t be leaving you my convertible after all.”

He grabbed his keys and an extra suit from the closet and headed for the door, but stopped to pick up the rest of the very large and very wonderful peyote button, tucking it into his inner pocket with a satisfied pat. (We’ll be keeping you only for special occasions.)

As he strolled through the lobby, he tossed the keys to one of the staff with a quick “62 black Corvette” then paid the bill on his suite until the end of the month.

Had his Father given him the powerful vision? Or had his own mind conjured it from some place deep inside himself?

It didn’t matter to him any more It didn’t matter because he had learned something very valuable. He had seen a choice, played out all the way to its ending, an ending that he couldn’t bear to see realized, would never be able to bear. Not losing her because of his own stubborn wrong-headedness, not because he was willing to let fear win out over feeling.

“I’m an idiot, maybe the biggest one since the dawn of bloody time.” It was all a matter of CHOICE. 

And Lucifer realized that he’d had free will all along. Without even bloody knowing it. Every decision that you made was a choice. Every single one.

And they all had consequences.

When he got to Barstow over the California border, he chuckled as he took the turn-off to Route 66 and flipped the radio on.

He laughed again when he realized what song they were playing. It was the Clash, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” – the first song he and Chloe had ever danced to, the night before she saved Lux from the wrecking ball. 

“How delightful!” he thought and began to sing along, tapping his fingers happily on the leather steering wheel:

“If I go there will be trouble, and if I stay there will be double. So come on and let me know…….Should I stay or should I go?”

He couldn’t stop smiling as he put his foot to the floor and roared towards LA. He was going to put things right. He was going to choose happiness.

He was going home.

[END]


End file.
